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the Summer of Power Outages

KC9UDX

KC9UDX

Space Commander
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
Messages
7,468
Location
Lutenblag
In 17 years at this house, and 30 years living within 5 miles of here, the mains power has been very reliable. The power company, Weenergies, has lived up to their slogan, "Voted by our shareholders, 'Best in the Nation' at keeping the power on."

For the past sieben days, however, every time the sky gets dark the power goes out. It's out again right now. I have so many UPSs round here that I'm not even sure how many I have. Naturally all of them have dead batteries, and I'll be shocked if more than half of them still work. I guess I've got my money spent for the decade.

It's a good thing that I don't have an electric vehicle. I wonder if we've started to reach the point where electric cars are causing these outages.
 
Could be old equipment or weather issues (everybody has the AC cranked up). Utilities don't make that much money compared to most businesses so if they need to make major upgrades they tend to wait a long time. Quite a few old power generation systems (coal for one) are not competitive as they used to be compared to natural gas (in the US anyway). If you rely on wind turbines and solar a few non windy days or overcast skies can affect power as well.
 
In my state, on September 10, 2013, several places in my city and closer to the McDonald's I worked at that time, had no power (everyone ran their A/C on full blast and my house still had power) because of the 110F weather. The McDonald's I worked at was so busy, Hayes and 19 Mile Road were completely backed up and no A/C at work because the units broke. When I was on my 30 minute break, I drove to the closest gas station and got myself a 1.5L of bottled water to keep myself hydrated and it was hotter inside than it was outside.

Fortunately, the A/C in my 18 year old car was still blowing out ice cold air at 40F and it still does to this day and the Steak 'n Shake restaurant by my house had 1/2 of the building without power (lights, grills, microwaves, fryers, and registers) and the other 1/2 still worked (fridge, freezers, and some lights). The power outage started on September 9, 2013 and ended on September 11, 2013.

I would have some power outages at my house once in a while and the one time, the power was out for 24 hours in the Summer of 2006 and we ended up spending the night at my grandpa's house and in 2012, occasional brown outs (lost my childhood 486 due to a brown out that fried the BIOS chip). 2015 was the last time we had a power outage and that wasn't fun at all and the power was restored at about 1:45AM the next day.

There are a lot of things that can cause a power outage:
1) Tree branches putting too much weight on the power lines
2) Weather increments (bad thunderstorms and high winds)
3) Old equipment or running the A/C on full blast
4) Hackers breaching the power grids that a company monitors 24/7
5) Down lines and not fixing it *cough* PG&E *cough*

And I'm afraid of losing power at my house as I work from home 4 days a week, and no battery backup is present in my modem and I have one in my room that's connected to my TV, wireless charger, and a couple of other things, so I might bring that downstairs with me to keep my screens and modem running.
 
I haven't had a car with air conditioning since 1996. And I'm pretty sure that was the only car I ever owned (for two years) that had it.

What's irritating today is that sure we had high winds, but the storm hadn't even arrived yet.

I will survive. Tomorrow if the power is still out I'll buy a generator. Until then I can power the freezer with a car battery. I feel sorry for my neighbor; his wife had a C-section last week, and of course they have a newborn, their first.

The local Farm&Fleet is almost sold out of generators. I prolly shoulda bought one whilst I was there.
 
My mom's first car, a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass, had no A/C and the first car that had A/C for a while was a 1987 Dodge Shadow until 1990 when the A/C quit working and the 1991 Dodge Spirit blew the transmission at 25,000 miles in 1993.

In fact, the last car to have A/C that quit working was the old 1999 GMC Safari SLE. I cannot live without A/C at all and the HVAC system in my house is close to 23 years old and the A/C still works and the heater is fully functional as well. I have 1 car on my driveway that only has heat when accelerating and that's my mom's 2007 Chevy Uplander LT and my dad's 2005 Chevy Malibu Maxx LS has issues with the heater where I have to crank it to cold and jam it to hot. My 2001 Oldsmobile Intrigue GX has fully functional A/C and working heat (somewhat as I have air in the cooling system).
 
The older I get, the less I can take the heat. One of these days I'll move to Resolute.

But I just don't see the necessity for air conditioning in a car. I think a lot of people don't realise how much cooler it is inside a car that never had air conditioning. I suppose newer cars probably aren't designed very well for conventional cooling, either.
 
KC9UDX said:
But I just don't see the necessity for air conditioning in a car.
Click to expand...
When you really need AC in a car is when it's hot, humid and a heavy shower or thunderstorm is drenching you. This is when you can't even open the windows a crack for fear of drowning. :) You can't use the dash vents, either, because if you do the humidity rises so much the windows steam up and you can't see out of the car. This is when car AC is a must.
 
Stone said:
When you really need AC in a car is when it's hot, humid and a heavy shower or thunderstorm is drenching you. This is when you can't even open the windows a crack for fear of drowning. :) You can't use the dash vents, either, because if you do the humidity rises so much the windows steam up and you can't see out of the car. This is when car AC is a must.
Click to expand...

This is what everyone always says, but even if that were true (it's been hot and pouring for over a week here, windows don't fog up from the cowl vent), it accounts for how many hours out of the year?

If I had to travel a lot in a suit and tie, I'd probably want air conditioning in my car. Hopefully I never find myself in that boat.
 
I'm in the same boat where I'm semi-rural and for the most part saw the uncommon drop-out but in more recent years the interruptions became both annoyances and damaging.
They upgraded the incoming circuit for the neighborhood about a decade ago and installed some enormous 3-phase ground fault interrupter. Makes sense as it cuts everything downstream when it senses a phase-to-phase or a fault to ground, but instead of remaining down until its reset it has a time-out delay and resets by itself. As a result you can have a tree touch a line of a downstream branch and instead of popping a line fuse or just cooking the obstruction with a few hundred amps the whole neighborhood drops out, then three seconds later comes back, then cuts out in a cycle four more times before it gives up and phones home.
What does that mean? You get the inrush surge of some 5000 residents, plus any farms and commercial operations driving the circuit crazy, plus the hard drop-in and drop-out. Is it destructive? Very. My SGI's especially have either blown power supplies or cooked their logic boards entirely. My Origin 2000 has been dead with cratered mosfets for five years now. I ended up ultimately putting smaller hardware on UPS's and larger machines on a drop-out disconnect which opens on a power cut and won't reset until done locally.
 
Our reclosers always retry twice and on the third disconnect they need a manual reset. I don't know this for fact, but I've heard I said many times, and probably 50 times throughout my careers I've done the 1-2-3 count at work and then the power is out for a while.

I'm thinking of doing something like you did. Not just for the computers though: I have some very expensive refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, well pump, etc, that I don't want zapped. The first thing I do when the power flickers is shut off most of my breakers until the power stabilises. But more often than not, I'm not home to do it. We've got storms coming again tomorrow. This is our one day in months without rain. So I expect the power will go out again tomorrow.
 
You just need a big contactor and a push switch. When the power drops it opens the contactor and stays that way until you push the button. It should have an input light to tell you when things are OK.
Dwight
 
Dwight Elvey said:
You just need a big contactor and a push switch. When the power drops it opens the contactor and stays that way until you push the button. It should have an input light to tell you when things are OK.
Dwight
Click to expand...

Yep, I already have a suitable contactor somewhere, but I'll want to split my current panel in to two so that I can still power lighting-only circuits. And at that rate I might as well install a transfer switch for a permanent generator. All's I needs is time and money. :(
 
KC9UDX said:
The older I get, the less I can take the heat. One of these days I'll move to Resolute.

But I just don't see the necessity for air conditioning in a car. I think a lot of people don't realise how much cooler it is inside a car that never had air conditioning. I suppose newer cars probably aren't designed very well for conventional cooling, either.
Click to expand...

I have an 88 Dodge Dakota with one floor vent operated by a handle. It didn't have working A/C the first few years I had it and it was intolerable, especially in traffic. 105F with 90% humidity, no breeze stuck in traffic with smog and you'd almost stroke out from the heat.

Even when driving with a 65mph breeze, it was still intolerable, you were just moving around hot air. I spent $400 getting the A/C working again and it was the best money I ever spent. The original compressor was actually good, except for the fact that one of the bolt ears was broken off, so I couldn't get the unit sealed. Ended up having to replace the compressor, condenser and dryer. Much later on I replaced the evaporator core and dryer again when I replaced my leaking heater core, because although the system was still sealed, it looked like hell and it was a 16 hour job I didn't want to do again.
 
I don't recall what the cab of a Dakota is like, but in most cars I've owned or worked on, even with old-fashioned cowl vents, if there's air conditioning, the vents don't work anywhere near as good as the same model vehicle without the air conditioning option.

Some cars, especially the newer they are, tend to be worse in the heat. Old, uninsulated, two-door cars seem to be the best.

I just did the 16-hour Chrysler heater box job the other day. The heater core leaked, and to my surprise it wasn't aluminium. The evaporator was still good but I put a new one in anyway. I'd have changed the blower motor but the new one was worse than the old one.
 
KC9UDX said:
I don't recall what the cab of a Dakota is like, but in most cars I've owned or worked on, even with old-fashioned cowl vents, if there's air conditioning, the vents don't work anywhere near as good as the same model vehicle without the air conditioning option.
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Here's mine after I had the carpet, doors and headliner redone:

https://i.imgur.com/TfnLTer.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/2HIMCRt.jpg

This truck had the A/C option from the factory, but you can get the truck without A/C and there's a dummy pulley assembly where the compressor sits to use the same belts (the alternator is driven off the same belt as the A/C compressor.) The A/C doesn't work as good as it did from the factory because I converted it to R134a from R12. Getting it refilled with R12 would have cost a ridiculous amount of money because it requires 44 ounces.

KC9UDX said:
I just did the 16-hour Chrysler heater box job the other day. The heater core leaked, and to my surprise it wasn't aluminium. The evaporator was still good but I put a new one in anyway. I'd have changed the blower motor but the new one was worse than the old one.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my heater core was copper and it had all sorts of green/blue corrosion on it:

https://i.imgur.com/H2E6brP.jpg

You can see the evaporator core was choked full of mold and it got replaced as well. I tried to clean it up, but it was too far gone.
 
What bothers me is that I've got thirty and nearly 40 year old vehicles and I've worked on 60 year old vehicles which never had damaged brass heater cores. This one was only 20 years old, but I'm not really shocked; the part was sourced by and probably designed by DaimlerChrysler...

Yeah, I've seen plenty of R12 cars filled with R134a, which is why I'd be very hesitant to bother doing this to one of my vehicles. I guess it's better than nothing, but still very disappointing, knowing how well R12 worked in those systems. But I'm content without air conditioning.
 
Just yesterday I was reading this thread, thinking, "How can the power keep going out in summer?" ... and then my power went out for 9 frigging hours! There was no storm, it wasn't windy or anything.

My power goes out regularly in winter when wind or snow take down trees over the power lines, but never in summer. (except that monster power failure in 2003)


commodorejohn said:
I'm being reminded of all the things I just don't have to worry about driving a '69 Volkswagen... :lol:
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I've got a '58. Driving in summer is no problem. Vent windows are the "air conditioning". It's the winter that was a nightmare - frost inside and outside on the windshield, puny wipers that can't push much snow, no windshield washer, hands freezing to the steering wheel, etc..
 
I haven't had the power go out in winter since 1990. And technically that wasn't even winter, it was a winter storm in spring, which is why it was a problem.

I don't worry as much about the power going out in winter. I can run my furnace from a car battery, and keeping food cold doesn't require much effort in the winter.

If what I'm experiencing lately becomes normal though, I'm going to buy a generator so that I can run my well pump and water heater.
 
I'd say my power goes out around 20-30 times every winter. (and winter lasts around 6 months)

KC9UDX said:
If what I'm experiencing lately becomes normal though, I'm going to buy a generator so that I can run my well pump and water heater.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's one of the most annoying things about a power failure if you have well water. Not only do you not have power, but you don't have water either. Not having water is far more annoying than just not having power.
 
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